As Curiosity is slowly making its way around Mars, it seems to have spied something not too far away. This has happened once before, but that one turned out to be a piece of plastic from the cute little rover itself. This time, it looks like quite the shiny object…. A metallic rod/arm/flower/water bottle is seen sticking out of the ground.

They (being scientists of the rocket variety) attribute this find to simply a more competent base metal that has not erroded or rusted like most would due to the lack of oxygen on the planet.

I, on the other hand, am quite positive that those are the remains of Arnie’s metallic hand. I know it’s a little fuzzy, but I see a thumbs-up. Actually it looks more like a foot, and he just went into the ground head first. OR…….. Transformers. Regardless, I would hope that NASA would deviate Curiosity off its course and check it out, personally. However, even though it’s literally supposed to be only a few metres away, that would probably mean a 1-2 week deviation, or something like that, costing millions….. I still think it’s worth it.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give to go live on beautiful and aptly named HD 40307.

That, my friends is the name of the new Super Earth that was discovered in our own galaxy, not too far far away. It’s pretty slick. They (being relevant scientists) took a second look at a not too distant solar system which I believe was only known to have 3 planets. Now they’re discovered a few more, and one has the potential to be a super Earth, which to qualify have to have the right conditions for life, and….. well I think that’s pretty well it. Hopefully to qualify it doesn’t have to be inhabited by a bunch of idiots. And by bunch, I mean shitload… Did you WATCH that election last week? I was worried there for a bit.

This game just might be handy in the future

When I hear about stories like this, I tend to think of things that we don’t necessarily take for granted, but that we tend to forget about incredibly unique to our planet. Such as the 24-hour system! Just think how different life in general would be on a planet 7 times the size of Earth, and not necessarily the same distance from its star as Earth is from our Sun. Each day could be 72 (Earth) hours long, a year could be 3 (Earth) years, oohh the possibilities are endless! Taking a plane from one side of the planet to the other might be a 2-day trip! Well I guess everything would be kind of relative. I believe I read that they did detect (don’t ask me how) that HD 40307 could have a slight tilt, just like Earth, which means seasons! Faaantastic…. Months and months of winter, ooohh man! Again, all relative.

Sidenote, watched Prometheus last week, kind of like visiting another planet with possible humans on it…… meh, not bad. SPOILER = They turned out to fucking suck.

There are a lot of things going on on this crazy planet of ours, it can get pretty distracting, but do you ever stop to think and wonder “How close DO asteroids get to pummeling Earth?”. Neither do I, but it’s one of the countless things we take for granted while we live here.

So lo and behold, an asteroid!! A solid close call that should be taking place…. today. NASA has a program called the Near-Earth Object Program, which I’ve heard about once before ages ago, but basically attempts to track as many asteroids, comets, etc., and attempt to depict their drunken paths through the solar system, as opposed to their sober counterparts which stay in their orbit….. if they stick to their rehab.

This one would be a little too close for comfort.

The asteroid will be passing between the Earth and the Moon, which apparently hasn’t happened since 1976, only this time we actually know about it before it happens. It’s roughly the size of the Toronto Rogers Centre, according to CBC.ca, but for our American comrades….. Yankee Stadium? That’s just a guess on my part. I can only assume stadiums and arenas are more or less the same size, and if this asteroid were actually making a house call to Earth, I doubt it would matter.

The next event like this shouldn’t happen again until 2028, giving plenty of time for an up-and-coming supervillain to totally use it to his/her advantage. Unfortunately the Avengers are making an appearance NOW of all times, which means we’re totally screwed down the line. I think that movie’s going to be a total let-down.

People seem to really be digging the black holes these days, but I don’t mind one bit, because as soon as there’s a story about one (and I actually hear about it), then it’ll be here!

So to keep on with that theme, Chinese scientists have apparently created an artifical black hole, without the help of the LHC.

Some type of experiment... can't really even make something up at this point.

It an attempt to actually capture and trap visible light, an 8.5 inch black hole was created. However, don’t worry your pretty little heads, because unlike your typical black hole out in space, this one was induced magnetically, not gravitationally. The reason the LHC was so ‘frightening’ when it turned on, was for the fear of creating a black hole which would pull everything around into it’s blackey abyss, which includes this fantastic, oxygen-bearing planet of ours. However, this one is not the same. In other terms, instead of sucking in the surrounding light into it’s center, this artificially created black hole, bends the light towards the center, creating a relatively harmless black hole, except for all those stupid photons… AAAHAHAHAHA! Useless I tells you!

Anyways, with the advancement of this technology, the hope is to create a ‘trap’ for light gathered from the Sun via solar cells. Sort of like a storage for sunlight, which sounded a lot cooler when I wrote it. Doesn’t that sound cool?! Imagine carrying a briefcase of sunlight around!? I know that’s not exactly what they intend to do, but it’s still cool… so shut it!

What a fail, in my books anyways. This morning, the Soyuz spacecraft took off towards the ISS (International Space Station). It’s passengers consisted of a Russian cosmonaut/scientist, an American astronaut/scientist, and finally, a Canadian entertainer/f#@%ing moron…

I want to punch this man in the face...

Yes, Guy Laliberte, founder of the famous Cirque du Soleil acrobatics show(s), took off into space as the first Canadian space tourist. This seriously drives me nuts… not so much that he’s up there, but the fact that he spent a cool $35 million to do it. $35 million smackers to go to a place where your presense in no way benefits anybody… anywhere. If it does, for the love of god someone explain it to me.

He’s a billionaire… great… and yes, I’m sure he’s donated to several charities, and helped out a lot of people, sure… But this seems like a pretty smug move, I mean, look at his smug face!! In one article, he said he’s going to “tickle the astronauts [on the ISS] while they sleep”. Really…??

Really, I hate this man, and I’m embarassed to be even remotely associated with him as a Canadian… yes, I’m judging a book by it’s cover, but I don’t care. You would think $35 million dollars could buy him a better reputation, but I guess that would be a waste of money. Alright, I’m done…

First off, I have to excuse for the last couple posts… they’re basically pity posts. I just haven’t found the time to finish off the ones I’ve started, then time flies and it becomes old news.

But fake apologies aside, this is pretty cool. Obviously, the universe can never be explained, it can only be speculated upon. This can be fun, but also frustrating at the same time Fun because when you’re dealing with something like the entire universe, there’s so much potential for wondering how it was created that you can think of anything, and it would be plausible. And frustrating because, you’ll never find out… But this video below is pretty wicked, and the woman easily explains all the theories that are out there about how the universe may have come to be, and what it actually is.

I do have to wonder about when they show the Earth, and they show an age of 6.77 billion years. I’m not sure if there recording that as the age (because it’s really only 4.56Ba), or they’re trying to explain something else that I’m missing. Someone figure it out for me!

I can see why the thought of multiple universes out there is appealing… it’s just effing cool… I dunno, you start thinking that there are other universes out there, then you’d start thinking about, hmmm, maybe they’re parallel universes, and then, oh man, what if there’s another me out there, and cut off jeans are still cool, so I’d be a total ladies man. Not bad… But it does put things in perspective about our place in the universe… or universes… universi? Not so much a question of if we’re just a blip in the cosmos, but more like how small of a blip, because we’re guaranteed to be only a blip. Most likely smaller than we thought, which is pretty damn small.

But don’t worry my fellow blips! Life still seems pretty big from down here, so there’s plenty of it for everyone… go enjoy! Which is hard to say when you’re stuck in this damned airport going back to where you just came from because your flight’s been cancelled due to…. yes… lack of available aircraft. Enough said…

Alright, so this is pretty much old news, but I wanted to write about it anyway. So this massive black hole at the center of a quasar was discovered recently, said to be as massive as 18 billion of our Suns. Now, I’m kind of confused about when this was discovered, because even though I’ve been seeing it in the news in the past month, all the articles I read are dated 2008 and 2007, so this might be really old news.

Artist's rendition of a black hole.

Technically, you can’t observe a black hole directly because it swallows up everything around it, including light, making it… well black, against a backdrop of black space, making them pretty hard to spot. So how can you tell how big this thing is? Well, click on the picture and read on, but believe it or not, there’s a smaller black hole orbiting around the big one, and twice a ‘year’, it goes through the disc of matter surrounding the large one, creating a burst of light/energy that can be measured from Earth. With countless measurements, the data can infer the size of the larger black hole without ever actually ‘seeing’ it.

I thought that was pretty cool, and no worries, it doesn’t look like it’ll swallowing us up anytime soon.